1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for selecting content to develop a story in accordance with a predetermined scenario, which is defined in advance in accordance with access related information relating to access by a user terminal (for example, a current position of the user terminal and a number of times the user terminal accesses the content delivery server) that is to be delivered to a user terminal such as a cellular phone terminal. The content is delivered to the user terminal when the user terminal accesses an interactive content delivery server via, for example, a communication network, and delivers the selected content to the user terminal via the communication network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Heretofore, a content delivery system for delivering various types of content such as images, text and sound (voice) to a user terminal such as a personal computer, or a portable communication terminal, via a communication network such as the Internet, has been proposed.
A content delivery system is known, for example, which acquires current positional information from a movable user terminal such as a portable communication terminal, and changes the contents to be delivered to the user terminal in accordance with a current position of the user terminal (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Publications No. 2001-187271, No. 2001-96069, and No. 2004-254206).
Japanese Patent Application Publications No. 2001-187271 and No. 2001-96069 describe that information indicating a current position of a user terminal (for example, identification information transmitted from a base station) is acquired and contents of a game are changed depending on a region where a user carries out the game with the user terminal.
Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2004-254206 discloses that current positional information is acquired from each of a plurality of user terminals and a lottery is carried out with respect to user terminals that are positioned within a predetermined area on the basis of a current position of each user terminal, which is indicated by the current positional information.
In the publications described above, although content to be delivered to a user terminal may be changed depending upon a current position of a user terminal, the delivered content cannot be changed by adding additional access related information, for example, relating to access by the user terminal other than a current position of the user terminal. Therefore, there is a problem that it is difficult to provide a user participation type game that keeps a user interested, or provides the user with an adequate sense of enjoyment.
Further, there is a problem that such conventional techniques, which just change contents to be delivered to a user terminal depending upon a current position of the user terminal, fail to motivate a user to continue a game that proceeds by receiving such content changes.
In this case, although a user access time and a number of times a user accesses a server apparatus that delivers the content is thought of as the access related information relating to access by the user terminal in addition to the current position of the user terminal, it is difficult to provide a user participation type game that keeps a user interested in the game, or provides the user with an adequate sense of enjoyment while playing the game just by changing contents delivered to the user terminal in accordance with only specific situations. Thus, this type of system fails to motivate a user to continue a game.
Namely, just adding a current position of a user terminal or a user access time independently among access related information relating to access by the user terminal on a game cannot cause adequate variation of content to be delivered, and therefore, it is impossible to increase variation of a story on the game. For this reason, there is a fear that such a game may become just a local event using each of delivered contents, and will fail to motivate a user to continue the game, resulting in the user getting bored with the game.